Review: Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren

Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren is AVAILABLE NOW!

Read my thoughts!

Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first women’s fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You).

The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother…only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

I. Am. Not. Okay.I finished reading LOVE & OTHER WORDS a few hours ago and I don’t know what to do with myself. How is one supposed to move on to another book after reading this one?! I am stunned. Overwhelmed. Speechless (but you can probably tell I’m getting over that quickly). Heartbroken because the book had to end and happy because of how it ended.

Macy and Elliot’s story is everything. It is a friends-to-lovers romance, a second chance romance, a coming-of-age tale, a story about forgiveness and grief and moving on and letting go.While this story contains some cliché-ish elements, there is nothing cliché about the story as a whole. It is unlike any other book I have ever read. To say my expectations were surpassed would be a massive understatement. I didn’t expect the level of emotion and complexity CLo brought with this book.

Christina and Lauren have a way with words that makes you immediately invested in Macy and Elliot’s journey. The entire book is told from Macy’s point of view and it alternates between the past and the present. You can see how Macy and Elliot’s friendship developed into more as they grew up in the “then” chapters and you can see how life reunites them and how they try to figure out their feelings for each other after eleven years apart in the “now” chapters. You don’t know what came between them eleven years ago until the end and it is pretty much impossible to guess what happened (or maybe I’m just clueless) but that makes it impossible to stop reading. You will devour every word inside this book until you get answers and a happy ending.

In a nutshell, the game has officially been changed. CLo just stepped up their game. I’ve been a fan of their stories for a while and I thought they had reached their top-level of amazingness but lo and behold, they just proved how wrong I was. They were able to make me want to cut my heart out of my chest from the love overload (who would have thought one book could make me feel such amount of love) and also want to cut it out because the heartbreak was too much to bear (who would have thought reading a book could hurt so much). They reminded me why I BREATHE romance books and that is why… this book is one of my favorite reads of 2018.

Massive thanks to Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

6 / 5 flowers

Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners/besties/soulmates and brain-twins Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 international bestselling authors of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, The House, Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You, Roomiesand the upcoming Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating.